2/7 Welcome To Hong Kong

The next morning I awoke and Will was gone. I assumed he had gotten off at an earlier stop. Hong Kong was the last stop so I didn't have to worry about missing it. The couple left the stop right before mine. When they left, I secured all my stuff back into my luggage and brought it out from under the bed and the overhead door shelf and seated myself on the lower bunk which I was quite angry to find had been near a small heater underneath the small table placed by the window. I had been freezing that night, wrapped tightly in layers of clothing and my blankets feeling miserable as I had struggled to drift off to sleep. The train was very poorly heated. There was also a small outlet by the heater that I hadn't seen which would've been useful so I didn't have to wait for my phone to charge in the hallway so late at night.

I griped silently to myself about how I should've taken a lower bunk while I sat at the head of the bed and looked out the window. There wasn't much to see landscape-wise. China, I found, has two types of landscapes. Really well-developed areas and cities or crumbly old buildings and really under-developed towns. And all in between lots and lots of just barren looking land. I recalled Thunk's stories about the government construction and how it was a lot to take on being such a vast country.



A train attendant came in and asked for the card that identified my room and station (they periodically checked to make sure everyone was in their appropriate bunks). I gave it to him and prepared to leave the train as I saw the last of the passengers gather their bags and head down the corridor to wait by the exit doors. I rolled my luggage out and grabbed my jacket and hat. As I waited, an old woman turned and asked me a question in Chinese. I was confused for a second but her grandson (a different kid then the one obsessed with my Pokemon game) turned and answered with a word I wasn't familiar with. I had assumed after a minute or two she must've asked where I was from and I pondered the kid's answer because it wasn't the word for American.

He must've told her I was African, I thought as I had been mistaken for African several times since I've been here. I looked up the word in my translator as we exited the train for African in Chinese and I found I had been right. He had said Fei-something on the train and the word for African in Chinese was fei zhou. The word for American was mei guo. It's amazing how confused people get in China about the fact there are black Americans. They immediately associate white faces from places such as Europe or America, projecting their own culturally homogeneous structures onto other countries, when other countries are much more diverse  and histories are much more complex in the way of immigrants. I also know that Africans also travel quite a bit. I've run into them a handful of times in Shanghai and even saw a few at the station in Hong Kong later that day so I guess it was also a fair assumption to make considering where we were heading. It's true that not many black Americans make their way to China.

I recalled an Asian-American girl stopping me at the Shaanxi Museum in Xian and introducing herself. She was from D.C. and was surprised to see me because she hadn't seen any black people in China. She asked me where I lived and what I was doing here. We talked for a bit. She was friendly but seemed rather excited. I'm not sure exactly why. I figured maybe she had some black friends at home or something being from D.C. and all she was just happy to find a face that looked familiar and reminded her of home.

It was easy enough to find customs when I arrived at the station as there were signs everywhere pointing to the subway that would take me into Hong Kong after a customs check. But first I stopped at a McDonalds for breakfast. I was relieved to find they served food that actually tasted like the McDonalds from home. Since I've been here, the meat even in the American fast food places here tastes strangely different albeit edible but the slight taste difference always bothers me.

It was crowded and much warmer in Hong Kong. To be exact, it was 70 degrees that day in early February. Back in Wuxi it was around 40 maybe 50 degrees. I stripped out of my leather jacket and other layers I had on the train and placed it in my rolling luggage and headed to customs which was actually painless enough. I had managed to stealthily cut into the middle of a long line and get through customs in about an hour or so. I figured out the money exchange as HK dollars are different currency than Mainland China. The train ticket system was very similar to D.C.'s where you select the stop and pay the fee appropriate to your destination. It was simple enough for anyone who had ever been to any major city, really. And almost all the signs were in English and Chinese.

I actually saw the stop that matched exactly to my hostel address and it was right across the street from the station stop. It was in a prime location. I had prior only ever been to a hostel once and it was in New York with a group of friends and I had lost some items in there that were eventually stolen so I was nervous about this experience. But when I got to the hostel it was beyond my expectations. I was sharing a large room with 4 girls. There were codes I had to entire on keypads to get into the hostel and then for the individual rooms.They provided toiletries such as towels, slippers, blankets, toothbrushes and provided free beverages and snacks and free laundry. There were tons of bathrooms to be used (though the toilet and shower was broken in my room there were plenty of others the owner let us use in the other rooms. There was tons of room. I had a window with a gorgeous view overlooking the city.

 It was in a perfect location right in the middle of all the shopping areas, restaurants and the harbour in an area called Tsim Sha Tsui.

Except there was one problem.

I was only at this particular hostel for that day.

I had tried to add an extra day to my trip last minute to make it closer to a week's stay and didn't realize there were a chain of hostels under the same name called Apple Inn. So I had accidentally booked at a different location with this 1 day add-on and had to leave the next day and go to the chain that was located a few stops away in an area called Mongkok where I would be spending the rest of the week.

I got to my hostel in Tsim Sha Tsui around 2 in the afternoon and was pretty tired from the trip but I was hungry and also wanted to plan out where I wanted to go next tomorrow, giving my arrival day up to just resting and recouping before setting out on any kind adventure.

I looked up some things to do online and booked a ticket to a ballet the next afternoon. And then I set out to go eat. There were tons of restaurants but I wasn't sure what I was in the mood for. An Arab man walked up to me on the sidewalk where he was advertising his business and gave me a flyer with Middle Eastern food on it. I asked him where his restaurant was as I saw there was curry and I was always in the mood for good curry. He walked me back to the restaurant which was strangely enough was right back in the same building as my hostel, inside of which was really just a big old commercial building. The restaurant was only a few floors below my room and I found out from the guy that there were actually lots of restaurants in my building. He rang a bell and a short, hefty, chestnut-skinned woman with long, black hair and a friendly face opened the door.

"Welcome to Kebab!" she said as I entered. There were already several customers seated and eating. The aroma was strong and mouth-watering as it wafted through the air filling it with the scents of spices and herbs and marinated meats. I was seated in a small corner and given a menu. I expressed my surprise at the restaurants location to the waitress who was also the woman who had opened the door.

"Oh yeah, there's tons of restaurants in here." she said.

I ordered some chicken curry and some garlic naan bread and a coke. Everything was clearly homemade and fresh cooked to perfection. I spoke to the waitress for a little bit. She was talkative and cheerful. She told me she was from the Philippines, Baguio City.

"Have you ever been?" she asked me.

"No, I haven't," I replied, "China is my first trip overseas."

Her eyes got wide then. "Really? Well then you should go some day, it's beautiful. And lots of tourists go there."

I commended the staff on their food and paid the bill then meandered back up to my room stuffed with curry and ready to go to bed. Before I drifted off, I browsed around on the internet looking for other things to do and see in Hong Kong off of their tourist website and  made note of a few attractions that looked interesting for my week here.